


Bad Stuff in a Bad Place

by anielle



Series: everything you've got [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: But yeah it's about Diego coming across Klaus pre-show so it's got a heap of, Drug Use, Eudora Patch is there too, Gen, I feel like it's canon-typical but it comes closer to dealing with it than the show does, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Whump, also not explicit but there: Ben Hargreeves, ghosts with possibly violent deaths, it's from Diego's perspective so it's not explicit but it's there so be careful, just that mix of troubling things that come with the character of Klaus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 19:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18372743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anielle/pseuds/anielle
Summary: There’s something about this basement that’s got the hair on the back of Diego’s neck standing on end. He’s about to head back upstairs when he hears a whimpered string of sentiments that is troublingly familiar. It’s Klaus, of course, because there's no way that Diego would ever have been able to get through his first month of field training without his family managing to make things difficult.Diego knows Klaus is not a particularly law-abiding citizen, so he wouldn’t have expected his addict brother’s reaction to being caught in a drug bust to look so much like relief. Especially once he notices how his left wrist is cuffed to one of the pipes running across the middle of the wall.





	Bad Stuff in a Bad Place

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know that plenty of pre-series fics about Diego coming across Klaus in a nasty situation exist already. But this one is the one that is _mine_ , and since I already did the work of writing it, I might as well share it with you lovelies and angst gremlins. 
> 
> I'm pretty sure having too much fanfiction isn't really a problem...

He’s been in objectively scarier places than this. He’d been a freaking teenage superhero; he’d seen more danger by the time he was 12 than most people experience in a lifetime. Yeah, he’d ran with a team back then, but now he has a gun. And so far, his gun hasn’t heard a rumor right before they got into a fight that the only way he could move was by hopping on one foot, or pulled the classic ‘oh no I teleported into the knife you just threw and now I’m going to die and dad’s going to _kill_ _you_ ' prank. So with the rest of the cops just upstairs, it seems like more than a fair trade-off.

Still, there’s something about this basement that’s got the hair on the back of Diego’s neck standing on end.

Maybe it’s residual unease from seeing all those strung out people upstairs. It’s not that Diego finds them frightening, of course, but it drags up unpleasant memories whenever he sees that particular hazy, _missing_ look in someone’s eyes, knowing that they are so far gone they can’t even see him enough to recognize him. Maybe it’s just the natural ambience of a dark basement. The dirty high set windows on the far wall let in some of that late afternoon sunlight, but grudgingly, so that once it filters through the dust in the air, it feels more like dusk.

Probably it’s more to do with how the sound that brought him down here, a faint but intentional arrhythmic thumping, stops entirely when he steps down off the final stair.

The neighbors, college renters, had called in a noise complaint, citing loud banging and “something weird.” When pressed, she’d amended it to an unconfident, “Muffled shouting? I don’t know, just - not normal.”

So Diego stays still at first and surveys the room laid out before him. It’s a large space, probably intended to function as a family room, but the addict upstairs who owns the place doesn’t seem like a ‘family’ kind of guy, and now it looks like forgotten storage. There are boxes stacked on the ping-pong table, piles of laundry taking up a third of the couch. 

Or presumably it’s just laundry. Part of him wonders if this is actually like those stupid teenage hijinks, if he’s being pranked. It's his first week of training in the field, after all, but hazing seems like a bad plan when the sound is the only thing that made it legal for him to come down here in the first place, and also because of that part where he has a _gun_.

The thick layer of dust coating the floor in that part of the room looks undisturbed, though, whereas there is a sort of path going left and right. Nothing as cliché as footprints, but the dirt is thinned and pushed aside into drifts, so Diego quietly heads to the left. 

There’s only one room over here, and the door has been left half open, which is handy. They’d gotten lucky with one of the users upstairs being either so young or so stoned or so both that he'd just opened up the front door to police, giving them a wide view of a living room strewn with drugs and people shooting up. Since they aren't here with a warrant to search the place, they have to be careful about only accessing what is in plain view or actively criminal.

Peeking around corners like this isn’t Diego’s usual style. He’s much more of a ‘kicking doors down’ type. But, contrary to popular belief, he actually does listen in class, or at least when Eudora lectures him about it later, and he’s capable of following the rules. If he has to.

This room is a sparsely furnished bedroom that looks like it gets more use than the common space behind him. In line with the rest of the place, it’s still scuzzier than anywhere Diego would want to sleep. Especially with the leather straps dangling from the headboard and tubes of lube that aren’t fully hidden underneath the bed. 

Not that Diego has anything against leather as an aspect of a healthy sex life, or even the concept of a basement bedroom, but all of that needs to happen in a place with a lower likelihood of contracting tetanus. The amount of loose needles in this house is an absolute dealbreaker.

He heads past the stairs to the other side of the basement. It’s barely even a hallway, it’s so short, just a door on each side, one a small room cutting into the common area, and one that’s halfway under the stairs. Diego bets one is a laundry room and the other is storage, or a half-bath, but both doors are closed, so his inspection can’t go any further.

He’s about to head back upstairs and say the banging must have been pipes, like the idiot husband in many a horror flick, when he hears it. Little crying sounds that he can’t quite make out as words, from the room under the stairs. 

He hovers close by the doorframe, holds his breath, and strains his ears to make as certain as possible before he goes busting through any doors that what he’s hearing is a person in distress.  He thinks he can distinguish “I’m sorry,” and “I can’t,” a couple of times, but it’s a whimpering, “Look at me, what do think I could do to help you?” that stands out. It’s a string of sentiments that Diego has heard before. On the other side of a door, too many nights when he was younger, but he’d left it closed then.

He barges in.

“Thank _christ_ ,” comes the voice that’s troublingly familiar. “Nothing like confinement to make the heart grow fonder, but there’s really no need, you know? We can talk about this.” 

It’s Klaus, of course, because there isn’t a nasty, kinky crackhouse in this city that Diego’s junkie brother wouldn’t worm his way inside of. Just as there was equally no way that Diego would ever have been able to get through his first month of training in the field without his family managing to make things difficult. No one from the force has straight up asked him yet if he’s a _Hargreeves_ Hargreeves, but he knows it’s only a matter of time.

“Shut up, shut up, could you just shut - ” his brother hisses, and Diego fumbles at the wall to find a light switch. This part of the basement must be entirely underground; the underperforming sunlight behind him isn’t doing much to light up the space.

“No, no no no, I’m sorry, not you, I -” When Diego flips on the uncovered bulb hanging from the ceiling, Klaus’ voice ratchets up in intensity. “ _No_! Not you, love, I’m sorry, please, I didn’t mean _you_ , I would never!” 

It’s a laundry room, the two blocky, old machines taking up most of the left wall and an industrial-style sink across from the door near a floor drain. Like the rest of the house, the room is coated in the grunge cultivated by years of neglect, and it takes him a moment to spot his brother. He’s sitting on the other side of the dryer, where the ceiling slopes under the first half of the stairs, across from the undersized door that must be for small storage nook. Just the scuffed tips of his black sneakers poke out into Diego’s vision.

“I didn’t - you are - ” Diego steps into the center of the room and watches Klaus blink wide,bloodshot eyes at him in surprise. “You're…Diego. My favorite brother!” He laughs and shakes his head in bafflement. His voice slips back into its usual breathy chirrup. “No offense.”

None taken, obviously? “If your favorite brother was Luther, then I’d be offended," Diego says.

Klaus laughs again. That’s Klaus, always laughing. He seems a little _off_ right now, though, his gaze darting around too fast, but then, ‘off’ is also to be expected with him. “What are you doing here?” he asks, but he cocks his head, listening, and puts together the answer for himself. “The cops are raiding the place.”

Diego knows his brother is not a particularly law-abiding citizen. Klaus’ feelings for their singularly unconventional father had long since spilled over into a generalized defiance towards authority, and he can’t blame Klaus for that. He’s not as flamboyant as Klaus about it (no one can be as flamboyant as Klaus, about anything), but Diego shares his lack of respect for the rules. So it’s weird to see Klaus slowly unfold his long legs from where they’d been pressed up against his chest and close his eyes for a few deep breaths, because Diego wouldn’t have expected his addict brother’s reaction to being caught in a drug bust to look so much like relief. 

Especially once he notices the reason why Klaus hasn’t gotten up off of the grimy floor.

“You got arrested?”

“No!” 

Klaus opens up his tattooed palms, gesturing an innocent lack of involvement, and it might be more effective if it didn’t rattle the metal of the handcuffs. His left wrist is hanging up beside his neck, with the other cuff attached to one of the pipes running across the middle of the wall to the washing machine. 

“So how’d that happen?” 

All Klaus can do is make a string of incredulous noises, which, it’s worth noting, is not a real answer or an effective denial.

One of the first cops on the scene must have secured him here before Diego and the partners he is riding with arrived. Annoying that they didn’t tell him about it, just let him creep nervously down into the basement, letting his gun point his way through the shadows. So he was right about it being a hazing thing. It’s a good thing Diego isn’t entirely unused to packing deadly force. Trying to spook out the newbie seems like a supremely bad idea, but in his limited time with law enforcement, Diego has learned that plenty of cops are irresponsible assholes. 

There’s that distrust of authority again. Given how entirely unqualified he is for any other profession, he really needs to work on that. He will absolutely _not_ be crawling back to his father and his dollhouse of a mansion.

“And how’s he going to do that, huh?” Klaus says, which is also not a real answer. It doesn’t make any sense, actually, and Klaus isn’t even looking at him, he’s sneering at the sink… Or maybe at someone by the sink. 

“Wait, are you sober?” Diego steps in closer and Klaus’ gaze snaps back.

“Sober-er than I’d like.” He tilts his head like a shrug, then peers up at Diego through his long, dark lashes. “Plan on helping out with that?”

“Jesus, Klaus,” Diego swears, and at least Klaus has the decency to look chastened. 

Decency might not be the right word. He’s chained, in a basement, on the floor, surrounded by cigarette butts and rat shit, so desperate for a hit that he’s begging his cop brother to help him get high. Decent seems pretty far removed.

“This is a bad place, Klaus. You shouldn’t be here. Bad people do bad stuff here.”

Klaus has always had such an expressive face. His emotions play quick and large, a performance you could see from the back row, and Diego watches him go from completely shuttered off to arch amusement in seconds. Covering his mouth in lazy shock with his free hand, Klaus says, “Bad stuff? Goodness gracious. Is it sex, drugs, or rock and roll? Or maybe all three! And violence?” He whistles. “The skeletons in these closets…”

He says it like it’s all a joke, laughter bubbling just under the surface of every word. Like Diego is just so precious and sheltered and adorably naïve, and it pisses him off exactly as much as it’s supposed to, but he still doesn’t miss the way that Klaus’ eyes catch on things that Diego can’t see. He _had_ said he was sobering up.

“Are you seeing - ” It’s hard to know how to frame the question given the determination Klaus puts into pretending his powers don’t exist. “Is there someplace we should be looking - ”

“Hargreeves, did you see that nasty porn bed over - Oh.”  Andrews steps into the laundry room behind him and Diego’s shoulders jump up to his ears. He’d almost forgotten he was here on police business and that there were other officers here, although now he’s got ghosts on the mind, to be fair.  “You found another dumbass junkie?”

Diego doesn’t get his thoughts in order before Klaus mutters, with bleak humor, “Cheers.”

“Why’d you cuff him to the wall?”

“I - I didn’t - ”

“Who cuffed him then?”

“I don’t - I don’t know - ” 

Andrews has only been an official policeman for two or three months max, but he always acts like he’s in charge, complete with asking questions one on top of the other without letting Diego finish an answer. Not that he has any real answers to offer in this case, but it’s still as infuriating as ever. It brings his stutter out, and that doesn’t help him answer any faster. 

“Big Eddie,” Klaus says, and even though he was doing his level best to be aggravating a moment ago, Diego can’t help but feel a rush of fondness for his brother when he cuts in with an explanation _just_ before Andrews manages to get his question out. He jangles the handcuffs. “I was all dressed up long before the city’s finest arrived.”

“Oh,” Andrews croons, crouching down over Klaus’ crossed ankles. “So you’re a real kinky piece of shit, then.”

Klaus is smiling but there isn’t any light in his eyes. “Well, Big Eddie is, certainly.”

Andrews blows out a noise of disgust. It’s extremely important that Diego believe it’s an accidental, unintentional side effect when the action sprays spittle across Klaus’ flinching face. 

Even as an accident, it makes him furious.

He can’t even move right now, or he will lose his job. And probably get arrested, too. 

Klaus wipes it away easily enough, literally and figuratively. “There really is a shocking amount of deviant behavior, isn’t there,” he laughs, high and breathless and fake, his signature delivery, “in this den of iniquity.”

Andrews growls and whips the key ring off his belt, which is when Diego finally realizes that he’s got his own set of police-issued keys, and that he could have released his brother earlier. But he’d been trying to follow the rules, for reasons he’s finding harder and harder to care about. 

As he unlocks the cuff from the pipe, Klaus’ instinctual “Danke,” gets cut off by a weighty grunt of pain that tears out of his throat. His hand plummets down like a set of concrete shoes, but the elbow stays stiffly bent in his lap as he reaches to gingerly massages his shoulder. The shoulder that Andrews grabs to haul  a yelping Klaus to his feet. He forces air out in a staccato, like he’s chuckling, but his knees buckle and he has to lean on the dryer to support his weight. Diego is not unused to seeing his perpetually intoxicated brother incapable of standing upright, but he doesn’t think illegal substances are what has Klaus swaying on his feet now.

“Come on, let’s put him up with the others,” Andrews says.

Klaus stutters through quite a few syllables before he can produce an almost casual, “Which others, exactly?”

“Doesn’t matter to you.” 

“I think it does,” Klaus mumbles, avoiding eye contact with Diego as Andrews yanks him out of the laundry room.

Now that he’s no longer a pile of scrawny limbs on the floor, Diego can get a better look at him, and the look is... not good. Klaus has never been a large guy, but he’s _really_ skinny under his oversized scruffy coat, or maybe it only became too big when he got so slight. His too-small t-shirt is worn so thin that it’s practically mesh and Diego can make out scrapes across his torso. His hair doesn’t have its usual jaunty volume, and his eyeliner is so smudged that it has colored full, heavy bags under his eyes. Diego _hopes_ it’s old eyeliner making them that dark.

He takes up the rear as they head out of the basement, and he can’t stop staring. At the knobby pelvis poking out from Klaus’ exceptionally low-riding tatty jeans, and the stippled blue bruises that snake out from his waistband and along those sharp hip bones, creeping up his sides. 

“How long have you been here?” he asks.

Klaus looks at Diego over his shoulder. “What day is it?”

“Thursday,” Diego says, but Klaus is already shaking his head. 

“As if I knew the date when I got here.” He flaps his ‘HELLO’ hand dismissively. Then he continues, in no one’s direction but at full conversational volume, “Really? No way.” Andrews scowls back at him, but Klaus doesn’t notice. “What do you know, anyway? You carry around a pocket planner, do some journaling? ‘Dear Diary, another day spent chained in a basement with my useless brother - ’”

“Do you ever shut up?” Andrews snaps.

“Not usually.” The second he sets foot on the first floor, Andrews shoves Klaus up against the wall to cuff his hands together behind his back. Even with his face smushed into the dingy beige wallpaper, he manages to slur out, “I can think of better ways to keep me quiet.”

Andrews doesn’t say anything, just spins him around to face the front door. When he tries to frogmarch him out of the house, Klaus digs in his heels for the first time. He’s not steady on his feet, but he’s a tall man and it’s enough of a stumbling resistance that Andrews actually has to work for it. 

If Diego helped him, they could sweep Klaus out of there with no trouble, all of the barely 130 pounds of him. Diego doesn’t help.

“Actually, could you explain to me why I’m under arrest, please? Because I know why I was in handcuffs before, but I’m not clear on why I am _again_.”

“Possession of illegal narcotics.”

“I am, regrettably, as clean as a whistle. Scout’s honor!”

Klaus, of course, has never been a boy scout. None of the academy kids would ever have been permitted to join any outside organizations. Not enough combat training in 4-H, apparently. It makes for an ironic way to advocate for his trustworthiness, but he’s looking miserable enough that Diego is inclined to believe him anyway.

“It’s an _expression_ ,” Klaus whines defensively, even though Diego is sure he didn’t say any of his thoughts out loud, “and I’m telling the _truth_.” He wrenches his shoulder from Andrews’ grip and flattens his body against the wall, forming a smaller target as he pleads, “Come on, man, it’s like you said. I’m a dumbass junkie. You know anything I had on me I would have taken, days ago.”

Diego wipes his face of any expression, because he knows if Andrews reads any opinion on him, he’ll decide to do the opposite, because he’s exactly that kind of asshole. And Klaus is right; Diego may be a rookie, but he’s reasonably sure that possession is the important part with drugs, not having used in the past. Speaking of which - _days_? How long has Klaus been in that basement?

“Clean, huh? We’ll see about that.” Andrews manhandles him again, now pushing him towards the side door that lets out onto the driveway.

“Great,” Klaus says, so cavalierly that Diego is now certain that he’s telling the truth. Which means he’ll be okay, and which means that there is more going on in this house that Diego needs to uncover. 

He peels off to where Eudora is bagging evidence in the kitchen; open floor plans are a godsend for detective work. Sidling up next to her, he says in a low tone, “I think there’s something weird in this house, Eudora.”

“Don’t call me that.” She doesn’t even look away from her work. Sasses him into his place without missing a beat. Diego is so gone for her. 

But that’s something to think about later. “Something worse than the drugs.”

Now she does focus on him, although not until she has her baggie zipped up and put away. “What did you see?” He hesitates, and she sees right through him. “So it’s a hunch. You know we can’t just poke through a person’s house looking for crimes to pin on them - ”

“It’s more than a hunch, alright? My - ” There’s a couple of reasons why he doesn’t want to claim Klaus as his brother, and he feels guilty about some of them, but those are more thoughts for another time. “My guy, that I just found in the basement, it seemed like he knew about some really bad stuff.”

She doesn’t scoff at his underwhelming word choice, at least. “A junkie? Not the most reliable witness, but you can try to use his statement to get a warrant.”

‘My addict brother who likes to hang out in basements and can sometimes see ghosts if he’s not high as a kite, which is basically never, was implying some dark shit, and either his sense of humor (which has always been too black for me anyway) has darkened even more since we were kids, or he’s telling the truth,’ isn’t going to cut it with Patch. It definitely won’t work on a judge.

At least he can try and get a straight answer from Klaus, try to get him to cut the bullshit runaround and be honest. It’s a long shot, but he has a better chance than Andrews at finding out if there is something worth knowing.

“If you really think this guy has done something terrible and needs to face justice…” she trails off.

“Yeah,” Diego says.

“You need to get a warrant.” It was a setup, of course. That she’s right doesn’t make it less annoying how she suckered him in. “Anything you find if you poke around where you’re not supposed to can’t be used as evidence. If you want to do this job - do _your job_ \- and make a difference, you have to learn to do it right way.”

He makes _her_ wait for his response, because the Hargreeves kids are nothing if not petty little shits when they want to be. They taught each other well. But she’s right, even as frustrating as it is; if he’s playing in this system, then she’ll always be right. So he nods, eventually, and goes to find Klaus.

When he sticks his head out the side door, though, Andrews and his brother are nowhere to be seen. They’re not in the kitchen or the living room, the only places the police are supposed to be on the ground floor of the house. He goes out into the front yard. There are three squad cars out here now and it’s drawing a crowd of neighbors that Terrance, a fellow trainee, has the unenviable task of keeping at a respectable distance. Diego grins and ducks his head, glad to have been otherwise occupied when they were finding the person for that job.

Sitting in the grass are the five people they’d busted when they first entered the home. Klaus hasn’t been added to the line yet. Four of them look exactly like Diego expects, the way that he always hates to see on anybody, lost and empty, too dirty and too skinny and too young to be here. 

The fifth guy is the homeowner, Big Eddie, apparently, and he’s more lean than skinny, with rough muscles coiled underneath his ratty tank and a serrated sort of life in his eyes. He’s whispering into the ear of the kid who mistakenly opened up the door to the cops, leaning into him so hard he's practically on top of the boy, who is curled over as much as his body will bend. Somebody should be keeping an eye on these people, and probably that someone should be Diego, since he doesn’t have an official assignment right now. 

He really doesn’t want to get tied down to one spot without talking to Klaus first.

The kid is hunched so hard that he’s trembling. 

Diego goes over there. 

He taps Big Eddie’s knee with his foot. “Back off, man. You shouldn’t be talking to each other anyway.” The kids look up at him like startled rabbits, but whatever unreadable thing is in Eddie’s expression isn’t fear. Diego’s about to ask him if he’s seen Klaus, even though it’s not a great idea to ask favors of stoned criminals, but then Klaus traipses out the front door of the house.

Andrews isn’t anywhere to be seen. None of the other police seem bothered about him, all busily focusing on their own jobs. Klaus is rubbing his uncuffed wrists as he ambles off the porch, moving right past Diego and his arrested friends like he's going to just slip away from this whole mess. He probably would if Diego didn’t snatch his arm. 

“Hold up, where are you going?”

Klaus makes a frustrated groan and tosses his head back, a full body slouch that is the posture equivalent of an indignant pout. Even though they are all technically the same age, Klaus always performed these little sibling gestures to irritated perfection. When he rolls his eyes, they are newly glassy, and they stay focused on Diego’s face instead of constantly flickering away like they did in the basement.

“Did you _take something_? In the past ten minutes since I saw you?” Diego should be inoculated against this kind of thing by now; he should be able to look at Klaus’ true superpower - continuously sinking to stupidly depraved lows - and take it in depressingly unremarkable stride. The way to help Klaus be less of a disappointment is to set expectations lower than none. 

The look on Klaus’ face makes it clear that he knows exactly what Diego is thinking. He scrubs his hand across his ruddy jaw and wipes away at his mouth as he shakes his head. “Officer Andrews turned out to be more reasonable than you’d think.” He turns to go. “Bye.”

If he would stop doing that, Diego could stop pulling on his sore arm. 

“Scheiße,” Klaus gasps. Big Eddie snickers from his spot on the ground next to them.

Diego explains, “You can’t just leave; I’ve got to take your statement.”

Klaus whirls to face him, his coat whipping out from his sides like he’s caught in the center of a solitary thunderstorm. He throws both arms out wide and juts his chin up. Diego can’t tell if it’s supposed to be combative or inviting. Or both. 

“You too? But we’re related!” Klaus spits it out, a weaponized, vicious flirtation. “And here I thought the other cop was the dirty one.”

Diego’s brain needs a second to catch up, sputtering in uneven fits and starts as he sluggishly grasps what his brother is implying. “Klaus,” he says, but he doesn’t have a follow-up. He doesn’t know if he’s feeling pity or anger or revulsion, or who it’s aimed at. He can’t help but notice now the fresh cowlicks livening up his brother’s messy hair, the new red marks of pressure mottling his jawline.

All of the air has gone out of Klaus. He’s small, standing there. He tilts his head, a half-shrug, apologetically helpless.

“You nasty slut,” Big Eddie jeers. Klaus holds himself very still. “Who was it? I’ll take care of him, baby.” Klaus doesn’t respond. 

The audience is unnecessary, Diego realizes, so he pulls Klaus along by the elbow. “Come on over here.”

“You know you can just ask me to go places. I actually don't need to be physically shoved every time I take a step,” Klaus grumbles, and Diego drops his arm sheepishly. Something about being in cop-mode makes him gruff.

“But you like it rough!” Big Eddie shouts at their backs. Klaus’ shoulders tense up practically to his ears. 

Diego figures they should probably remain ‘on the scene,’ so they stop at the end of the driveway, but at least out of earshot. He keeps his voice low anyway when he says, “You gotta tell me what’s really going on here, man.”

Klaus tucks fists under his arms, tension stretched tight across his chest. “Why? I mean, about what, what do you mean?” He piles the questions quickly on top of each other, then cuts off the words just as fast. He keeps shooting glances up to the house - to the criminals watching them from up by the house. 

Diego hates to do this, hates the insidious whispering guilt coiling in his stomach that tells him that if he asks, he’s just like thier father. He asks anyway because he has to. Because he has to know the details if he wants to fix things here. “You were seeing something in there, weren’t you? With your powers?” 

It’s just that they can help, with their powers, and if you can help, you should, with everything you’ve got. 

He hates this most of all, that he thinks this way. It proves he understands exactly where Sir Hargreeves is coming from, or that his father ended up in charge of him forever because he managed to crack into Diego’s head and implant not just thoughts but _how to think._ He’s not sure if either explanation is better.

Klaus is taking the direction of the conversation surprisingly well, though. He lounges his torso over the mailbox, a return to the languid Klaus posture that Diego is used to seeing. The weird part is that he’s staying quiet, but Diego gets why this isn’t a question Klaus is eager to answer. 

It’s hard to find the right word for it… Is Eddie his dealer? Boyfriend? Fuckbuddy? Diego goes with, “I know he’s your friend,” and that’s the wrong word too apparently because Klaus throws back his head and scoffs, “but if he _killed_ someone - ”

“Some _one_ ,” Klaus shakes his head. “No.”

Diego’s been in so many worse places than this, fought as a teenage superhero and trained to be a cop. He shouldn’t be chilled by the implication lurking inconspicuously in his little brother’s precisely casual tone.

All he can say is, “Klaus,” and he’s not sure what it’s supposed to mean. It’s full of emotion, but he doesn’t know what.

It finds meaning for Klaus. He sighs and bounces his weight from foot to foot. Diego is struck again by how much he seems like a little kid, even in his 20s. “Fine,” he says finally. “If I were you, I would take a peek into that closet down there.” He stares up at the house again and adds, “And under the porch.” 

Diego scrambles for his notepad; he didn’t expect to get specific information, and so easily. “Yeah?”

“Well, not really,” Klaus says, and Diego is going to absolutely murder him, the consummate and perpetual asshole. “Obviously, if I were you, you would definitely not be a cop. And you’d be a much better dresser.”

“Wait.” He’d forgotten how annoying talking to Klaus was. Even before all the drugs, long long ago, his brain didn’t follow a train of thought so much as hop around like a drunken grasshopper. “But there is actually stuff in the house?”  Evidence? Bodies? Diego can’t put a name to it. So it’s ‘stuff.’ Bad stuff in a bad place. He gets why Klaus can laugh at him for that, and he’s at least glad that Klaus still can laugh.

“Basement and porch, big guy.” Klaus claps a hand on Diego’s shoulder, then turns to go with a little salute.

That’s not going to cut it. He couldn’t poke around before and he can’t now just because some junkie tells him to, even if Diego has reason to believe said junkie has some pretty solid intel. Diego snags his elbow. “Nope, wait, hold on - ”

Klaus explodes. “Stop _touching_ me!” 

Diego lets go immediately. He wasn’t thinking about it - he didn’t mean to hurt him. 

He’s not used to seeing real anger on his brother. Klaus shrugs things off, he’s bored and detached, acerbic and cutting, but above all, Klaus is unaffected. Diego doesn’t think he’s ever seen Klaus _rage_. He doesn’t really see it even now. Klaus stays facing away, and it snuffs out as quickly as it sparked on.

Klaus’ posture is tight, but his voice is light and calm as he says, “I just really need everyone to stop touching me.”

“S - sorry,” Diego stammers. “I’m sorry. I - I didn’t - I - ”

“Yeah. It’s fine. Okay.” Then Klaus turns back with a bright smile. “What is it you still need from me, officer?” He corrects himself, “Brother. _Favorite_ brother, even. What can I do for you?” He points at Diego with both index fingers, and Diego can’t help but stare as the stretched corners of his grin congeal into a brittle grimace.

He hasn’t seen Klaus in a long time. Klaus…wasn’t okay back then. Diego is worried that he might be even worse now. He reaches out his hand halfway, an instinctual gesture, meant to be comforting. 

Klaus flinches back. And renews his animated expression, but it takes effort, another thing Diego doesn’t associate with his brother. His eyebrows are cocked so high and his smile pulled so wide that it looks almost pained. Diego isn’t sure what his own face is doing right now because he’s dealing with too many emotions to be totally in control of it, but whatever’s there makes Klaus look away and screw his eyes shut.

And again, Diego feels like the biggest piece of shit brother, because he hasn’t ever known how to help Klaus. He’s accepted that the best he can do is not make things worse. He’s not even managing that today. 

It seems to go better when they are talking about death and murder (their lives are so screwed up), so back to business it is, then. “I can’t open up doors without probable cause,” he explains. “I could only go down there in the first place because of the weird noises.”

“Weird noises?” Klaus frowns, like this is the first he’s hearing about the creepy banging. Which doesn’t make any sense, since he should have heard it better than anyone. He’s pensive when he adds, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“If there’s reason to believe there is a criminal activity in progress, especially something that’s causing a person harm, we can enter. Or if you can see something in plain view, which is how we got into this place.” Suck it, Instructor Davis and his condescending performance review - Diego _does_ pay attention in police class.

Klaus shrugs off to the side, muttering, “No, nothing.” So Klaus is not paying attention. No surprise there. “But he’s the one who graduated superhero school, not me! Since when do you worry about things like warrants?”

Once Diego sorts through the confusing pronouns, he’s pretty sure this is actually directed at him. “I’m a police officer now. Or almost. I’m trying to do the right thing.”

It’s a statement that sounds idiotic said out loud, exactly the kind of line that a superhero would utter while brooding nobly into the middle distance. And it’s true that while Klaus was more a part of the academy than Vanya, that’s not much of a bar to clear. His power hadn’t been particularly well-suited for combat in the first place, and they were giving him nothing to do long before he shattered himself into such a broken mess that they didn’t bring him along at all.

Numbers One and Two are the only siblings still clinging to the hero thing, and maybe it’s only because they’re such competitive bastards that neither of them will give it up first. But there is more to it, for Diego, and it’s another thing that makes him like Patch so much. She’s passionate about her principles, and she says the things that Diego feels much more eloquently than he could ever manage, speeches about integrity and justice and responsibility. The content isn’t hugely different than what he’d been raised on, but Diego came to the police academy by choice, and he listens to Eudora because he wants to, and that feels like an important distinction.

Klaus rolls his eyes and glares, two feet to Diego’s left. “Fine. Fine! Okay?” Klaus throws his hands up and announces, “I left my wallet down there.”

Diego doesn’t know where he could _fit_ a wallet in those pants. He’s not asking, not about that, anyway. “You took out your wallet in the laundry room of a basement where you were chained to a wall. What were you buying down there?”

Klaus waggles his thick eyebrows. “Use your imagination. Can I just go get it now?” He takes off up the driveway without waiting for an answer. Diego has to hustle to catch up with his long strides. 

“Sure it’s not under that bed?” Diego teases. “Fell out while you were engaged in other activities?” His insinuating eyebrows are not as elastic as Klaus’, but of course Klaus picks up on the innuendo without needing to even look.

“Are you asking for some stories? Or is it pointers you’re after?” Shameless as ever.

“I think I’m good, bro.”

“Hmm, probably.” Klaus flicks his gaze along Diego’s body. “Out of all our siblings, you _would_ be the one who knows how to bring leather into bed.”

And Klaus _would_ say something like that right as they are walking together through the house where all of Diego’s future colleagues are working. It’s a miracle of science that he manages to keep walking when the blood supply for his entire body instantaneously pools in his broiling, flushed face. 

“How about you just tell me about what you’ve seen here,” he stammers, requiring a professional and immediate change of subject.

Klaus knows this, obviously. Which is why he pauses, hanging in the doorframe to the basement, to say, “Really, if you have any pointers for _me_ \- I don’t have so much experience, you know, setting it all up. I’m usually the one - ” he waves his red-ringed left wrist.

It’s brotherly instinct to give Klaus a little shove between the shoulder blades to push him on from whatever terrible topic he’s stuck prattling about, but Diego clasps his hands behind his back, the way he had to stand for those two ill-fated weeks when he worked as a truly awful waiter in a classy downtown restaurant. He leans in instead and says in a low tone, “Get your scrawny ass down there.”

“Yeah, sounds just like that, usually,” Klaus sighs, but he does get moving.

He hesitates in front of the laundry room. For a long moment. 

Diego has to jar him back to the present. “It’s in there, right?”

Klaus nods, his eyes still far away. Like a wet dog, he literally shakes himself out of it, with a full body shiver and a scrunched-up expression like a teenager taking tequila shots. He nods again, but present and determined this time - and then he deflates. 

Diego asks, “Do you want me to go look?” 

Klaus flaps his hands at Diego in a ‘go away’ gesture and scrounges through his coat, and then ' HELLO’ floods his vision as Klaus covers Diego’s eyes. He murmurs an incongruous, “Shhh, just shhh….” but for all of his attempts at sensory camouflage, Diego can hear clearly enough the slippery crinkle of a plastic bag and Klaus’ dry swallow. 

“You said you didn’t have anything on you!”

“I didn’t,” Klaus protests, “not then. I would never lie to the police.” He presses his hand to his lean chest and delivers the last sentence with an overwrought, weepy faux-sincerity. It’s familiar comedic ground for Klaus, or what Klaus considers ‘comedic,’ anyway. Diego can’t count how many times Klaus had used that exact tone to antagonize Luther when they were young. Klaus always came away chuckling, even when the interaction ended with super-strength bruises, which was often enough. “Anyway, you didn’t see anything, so hush.”

The good humor seems genuine enough, but it’s uneasy, perched gingerly on top of something jagged and rocky. 

"You want to grab the light?" he says, and w hile Diego’s distracted doing that, he lunges for the door under the stairs.

The subterfuge is a sweet touch, but it’s not as though Diego didn’t suspect that this door might find itself open by the time their search was done. If Klaus is the one who opens it, if Diego tells him that he shouldn’t but just doesn’t manage to stop him in time… It’s very much not in the spirit of the law, but _technically_ , it should be admissible. Eudora wouldn’t approve. Klaus had better deliver - whatever is in this closet needs to be very good. Ethically very bad, but for case-building purposes, very good.

“Hey, sir, you shouldn’t go in - ” He says it loudly, and late.

Klaus snorts at the ‘sir,’ and just goes ahead and throws the door open like he was always going to. “Oh, look,” he says, his voice light but his laughter gone. He meets Diego’s eyes and cocks his head, a 'come over here' gesture that Diego didn’t need. He’s already there.

“Holy shit, Klaus.” There’s nothing light about his tone; he can’t tear his gaze away. He fumbles at the radio on his shoulder. He’s never had to use it before. “Can I get somebody - in the basement - I’ve got more evidence in the basement.”

It’s not a large space, just a closet for storage. Completely covered in clear plastic sheeting. There’s a couple of sturdy industrial plastic buckets. There’s bags of lye. That’s at least sixty pounds more lye than any good person needs, because no good person needs any lye at all. There are cheap plastic shelving units in the corner stacked with stained power tools, saws and drills and vice grips stained with either rust or maybe something else that dries to a flaky dull red.

And by the leg of one of those shelves, there is a bloody clump of hair and part of whatever the hair used to be attached to.

“I could use somebody, someone - ” The word that springs to mind is ‘grown-up,’ which is ridiculous, but he’s blanking on anything else. All that can fit in his brain right now is the chunk of human being that is sitting sticky and forgotten on the floor and that he would really like someone else to be in charge for a minute.

“A senior officer,” Klaus suggests softly by his ear, and Diego gratefully repeats the words into the radio.

Klaus. Klaus, who was sitting chained five feet away from all of this for days. His thoughts are still too disjointed to thread that knowledge through to a conclusion without help. He’s not sure that he wants it. “Klaus, what - ”

“Oh that’s right, I forgot, I don’t even _own_ a wallet. Well, that’s one mystery solved.” Klaus’ voice flows out smooth and dreamy, like they are having a chat in a coffee shop and not a murder basement. “You’re going to make a cracking detective, Diego.”

Then Eudora is there, “What did you find?” and Klaus gets fainter, “See you around,” and suddenly a lot of officers are jammed into a space that simply does not fit them, and eventually Diego comes up out of that basement and finds the sun is completely gone.

Klaus is gone, too.

Diego very much wants to have a discussion with Big Eddie. So does everyone else, and Diego’s just a trainee. He never stands a chance.

Eudora takes him out for a drink, afterwards, which only stings a little because he’s been working up the courage to ask her out since the first day he met her. Regardless of who asked who, they are having a drink together, and that’s something nice after a long day. 

He never found out how many days it had been…

In the papers, Andrews and Diego are credited as the two heroes who cracked the case. Off the record, in the private of the station, the captain and district attorney chew Diego out for not arresting ‘that good-for-nothing dope whore.’

It doesn’t matter that Andrews let him go because he couldn’t find anything to charge him with, just that they hadn’t kept him around to pull more information out of. Since Diego fucked up and let him go, maybe they can work that in their favor. What if Diego had just found him in that little closet in the first place, when he went to investigate the noises. It’s a stronger reason for the search, and a more compelling image.  He lets them know he won’t be changing his story, because it’s not a ‘story,’ it’s the truth. 

“Oh, another one of _those_.” The DA raises her eyebrows at Captain Radshaw, because apparently an honest cop is a bad thing. “Let’s keep an eye out for the junkie anyway; see if we can’t get the story from him.”

They dismiss Diego with instructions to write up a description, and he really wants to put out an APB for a short, heavyset blonde man with an affinity for camo and a big chunky American flag belt buckle, but after his speech about the truth, Diego describes him accurately. He leaves off a name. 

Diego wants to tell him to be careful, that the police are looking for him, but he doesn't have a way to contact him, and he probably knows already. Maybe it’s a talent that comes in pairs - he’s got a knack for troublemaking, and a knack for knowing when to get out of the way before consequences show up.

All of it means that Diego is a little less excited about the prospect of becoming a cop. He doesn’t blindly follow orders for their own sake anymore, and he thought that the rules were there for good reasons. That everyone, even the guys in charge, had to follow those same rules, but it turns out that he is naïve after all.

“Why do they bother so much about shit like doors being unlatched if they are okay to turn around and completely lie about the actual events that got us there?” Diego fumes over his third drink. It’s also probably his third time cycling through this tirade, but Eudora agrees with him, he knows she does, and now she comes with him not out of pity but because they both like talking to each other.

She doesn’t agree with the conclusion that his rants keep coming to. She argues that the way to fix whatever’s broken is from the inside, because she still believes in the system. Diego enjoys the spirited debate, but he can’t agree.

Because Klaus wasn’t good for nothing. If he hadn’t been there, able to operate outside of the law, they wouldn’t have found any of it. They wouldn’t have been able to get a warrant and search the whole property so thoroughly that they found the evidence to close out two missing person reports and discover the remains of a third victim. Diego’s the one with the glowing write-up in the paper, and the one who is still hung up on the heroics of his childhood, but Klaus is the one who saved the day in that basement. 

He wants to tell Klaus this, too, because this is something he doesn’t think Klaus knows at all. 

Eddie gets locked up for a long time, for almost as many years as Klaus is old, for the things he did to that guy and two girls. And Diego just can’t stop thinking about how the police almost left that house without finding any of what had been hidden away in that basement. Diego almost walked out of there without ever knowing that he was leaving his brother behind.

Any of his siblings, for varying reasons, would laugh at him if they knew was thinking about becoming a superhero again instead of a cop. Eudora won’t be pleased. He figures Mom will probably help him put together an outfit, though (and that’s what Allison would laugh at him for, designing himself a hero costume).

Being a policeman sure does pay better, because being a vigilante doesn’t pay anything. But he is done being used as a foot soldier, following rules made by people who don’t have any moral code of their own. And it’s just that if you can help, you should, with everything you’ve got. 

**Author's Note:**

> I do have thoughts about things that happen after this but this story is complete without that, and it's just ideas, not anything written down. But it's possible that this could end up maybe being a two-part series with the second part from Klaus' perspective. (And maybe not because I have 1) lots of ideas that aren't written down yet and 2) ADHD, which isn't exactly a combo that lends itself to a prodigious body of work.)
> 
> But hey I love love this show and our disaster boy and if you want to be friends and talk about all of our _feeeelings_ come hit me up on tumblr! @hermitreunited


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